Songfacts®:

• This song is about the darker side of love: obsession. The lyrics have a very dark undertone and seem to speak of how, as humans, we have certain wants and needs that, sometimes in order to fulfill, we will go directly against what we have been taught. That's why in the video, there is a person shaping a piece of wet, chalk-type material. The chalk represents lard, which represents our human urges. It's like when you know what you're doing is wrong, but the urge is so great that you do it anyway. If this song is autobiographical, he's most likely talking about some sexual experience that he feels guilty about.
• Lakini is the Hindu goddess of destruction. This relates to the video's odd depiction of lard... a symbol of overindulgence. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Live Freak - Beirut, Lebanon, for above 2
• Prior to the Secret Samadhi album, Live released their breakthrough smash, Throwing Copper, which sold 8 million copies in America and made them superstars. According to lead singer Ed Kowalczyk, the fame and fortune kind of freaked them out and they weren't sure how to follow-up such monumental success.
  
  "Secret Samadhi is the sound of a band in retreat," he explained in a 2004 interview. "It's kind of like, Oh my God, look what happened. Let's go somewhere and get in a room, and maybe bring some therapy with us, and just figure out what the hell we're going to do now."
  
  The band decided to go to Jamaica and rent a house in Montego Bay, where they hung out around the pool and drank a lot of wine. Although their tropical surroundings didn't influence the sound of the album, they may have gotten some inspiration from the, uh, foliage. "The record does not sound anything like Jamaica," said Kowalczyk. "In fact it's so bizarre and lyrically so out there that I still don't really know what most of it's about. Let's just say we were very friendly with the gardener in Jamaica."
• Kowalczyk said the idea behind Secret Samadhi, and releasing this atmospheric rocker as its first single, was to prove that they weren't pop artists despite having success in that realm. "What it did kind of in one fell swoop was to rearrange everybody's vision of the band, including our own," he explained.
• The album's abstract lyrics are meant to be experienced rather than analyzed. "Secret Samadhi is more of an emotional lyrical attack than it is anything else," Kowalczyk told The Boston Globe in 1997. "I went for a kind of behind-the-brain approach to lyrics. I wasn't very concerned with them making sense. It's emotion, not intellect, that's being challenged here."
• The song is built on a harsh guitar riff contrasted by soft orchestral strings. "The two together make the yin and yang of that song. There's two elements that give it a depth, a mystery that I think is unique," Kowalczyk explained. "Even though we might be rocking in a song like 'Lakini's Juice,' you never get the sense that it's gratuitously in your face just to kind of be angry with you or to get at you. It's aggression kind of conscious, kind of in the music, kind of up inside it."
• The provocative music video, directed by Gavin Bowden, features a group of scantily clad people who are waiting for their turn to participate in sexual acts in front of the rest of the crowd. Kowalczyk said of the concept: "When I look at the video I think of the Tantra, I think of bringing conscious energy to deep urges, whether they be sexual, or wrapped around a loud guitar, whatever they are."
• This was sent to radio stations as a promo single, but it wasn't available for purchase in the US. That meant it wasn't eligible for the Hot 100, which only recognized buyable singles until Billboard changed its rules in the late '90s, but it did reach #35 on the Radio Songs chart, #1 on Alternative Airplay, and #2 on Mainstream Rock.
• The album debuted at #1 in America, where it was considered a commercial failure because it sold only 2 million copies compared to its 8-million-selling predecessor.
• Live performed "Lakini's Juice" on the February 15, 1997 episode of Saturday Night Live.